Fair Use Lab » accessibility

Accessibility for Financial Services: DOJ Reaches Settlement Agreement with Wells Fargo

Mark Willis — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:36:00 +0000

On May 31, 2011, the Justice Department’s Disability Rights Section and Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California entered into a comprehensive settlement agreement with Wells Fargo & Company. Under the Agreement, Wells Fargo will pay up to $16 million to compensate individuals who experienced discrimination in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when trying to call Wells Fargo, access Wells Fargo’s services, or visit one of Wells Fargo’s retail stores.

Wells Fargo owns or operates almost 10,000 retail stores and 12,000 ATMs located throughout the United States. Wells Fargo offers a wide variety of financial services, including personal and commercial banking, mortgages, brokerage, insurance, and investments. The Department initiated its investigation after receiving complaints under Title III of the ADA filed by numerous individuals who are deaf, are hard of hearing, or have speech disabilities. The complainants alleged that Wells Fargo would not do business with them over the phone using a telecommunications relay service. Instead, the individuals were directed to call a TTY/TDD line that asked them to leave a message, which went unanswered. The Department determined that these actions violated the ADA. The Department also received a variety of other complaints alleging ADA violations by Wells Fargo, including the failure to provide financial documents to people who are blind or have low vision in alternate formats (e.g., Braille or large print), the failure to provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services upon request for in-person meetings between Wells Fargo staff and individuals who are deaf, and the failure to remove barriers to access for individuals with mobility disabilities. The settlement agreement provides for resolution of all complaints alleging violation of the ADA in connection with Wells Fargo’s financial services and retail facilities based on events occurring before May 31, 2011.

The settlement agreement requires Wells Fargo to accept calls made through a relay service by customers who are deaf, are hard of hearing, or have speech disabilities; remove physical barriers to access identified at its retail stores; provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services, including qualified sign language or oral interpreters, computer-assisted real-time transcription, qualified readers, and documents in alternate formats (Braille, large print, audio format, accessible electronic format) to persons with disabilities when necessary to ensure effective communication throughout its financial services and programs; ensure that its ATMs and websites are accessible to individuals with disabilities; and remedy all other instances of discrimination – including architectural barriers and operational issues — under Title III of the ADA that are identified during the claims process. In addition, the agreement requires Wells Fargo to make $1 million in charitable donations to non-profit organizations that will assist veterans with disabilities caused by injuries sustained while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to live independently in the community. Wells Fargo will also pay a $55,000 civil penalty to the United States Treasury.

New Communications Accessibility Law Signed By Obama

Mark Willis — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:29:05 +0000

According toReadWriteWeb:

President Obama signed into law today the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, legislation that will help people with disabilities access and participate in the digital world.

The law establishes federal guidelines that will require the telecommunications industry to make sure that the devices they build and programs they transmit are accessible to those with hearing and vision impairments. The new law requires a number of measures including an improved UI for smart phones that includes verbal commands, captioning for online TV programming, and compatibility between Internet telephone calls and hearing aids.

Multi-Sensory Approaches to Teaching Chemistry to Blind Students

Mark Willis — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:48:23 +0000

ILAB’s Cary Supalo will present “Multi-Sensory Approaches to Teaching Chemistry to Students with Blindness or Low Vision” on Tuesday. Aug. 31 at 3:00 p.m. in room 339 Fawcett Hall at Wright State University.

The Independent Laboratory Access for the Blind (ILAB) project, based at Pennsylvania State University and sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s Research in Disabilities Education program, is developing a suite of talking and audible laboratory tools to foster hands-on, independent, multi-sensory learning experiences for students with blindness or low vision. Through a partnership between ILAB and Vernier Software & Technology, most Vernier laboratory probeware is now capable of communicating information in speech or audible tones. This was achieved by interfacing Vernier’s Logger Pro data-collection software package with the Job Access for Windows with speech (JAWS) text-to-speech computer screen reader application. This interface was made possible through new JAWS script files, designed by the ILAB team. The interface utilizes a series of hot key strokes to obtain real-time probe readings, access to statistical information, data table navigation, and more. Also developed by ILAB, through the Electronics Shop in the Chemistry Department at Penn State, are several hardware devices, including a submersible audible light sensor (SALS), color analysis laboratory sensor (CALS), and scientific talking stopwatch (STS). All these tools have been field tested at 12 mainstream high schools and one residential school for the blind across the U.S.

Tools to be demonstrated at this presentation include the SALS and the JAWS/Logger Pro interface utilizing a Vernier temperature probe and motion sensor. The JAWS/Logger Pro interface recently became commercially available from Independence Science LLC. Other ILAB tools are in the commercialization process.

Researcher Seeks Input on Adapting Mobile Devices for Blind and Low-Vision Users

Mark Willis — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:36:59 +0000

I generally do not participate in surveys, on principle, because they aren’t accessible for me. What is promised to take “only a few minutes” usually turns into a quagmire.

I made an exception for Chandrika Jayant’s survey. Even though I have accessibility issues with ZoomText and Google Docs (in Firefox), ZT could read this survey, and it really did take only a few minutes. Chandrika explains:

I am a computer science PhD student at the University of Washington. My research is on mobile device and camera interaction for blind and low-vision people. My goal is to find a usable way for blind people to use the camera on mainstream cell phones to gather certain information about their environment.

I have set up a repository for blind people to submit photos they have taken. You can go here to answer a few questions and submit any photos: http://abstract.cs.washington.edu/~cjayant/cameraRepos/upload_file.php. I am interested in what issues blind people have while taking photos, and excited to see some of the results as I move forward in my research.

If you have not already completed my camera survey sent out a few months back, you can check it out here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGQ4aXZHcmZvaXBjN1Q3VUF3anNNUEE6MA

This should only take a few minutes to complete. All survey results and photos are anonymous and not tied to your identity.

If you have any questions, any comments on the form’s accessibility, or if you are interested in being a part of paid future interviews and studies, please send me an email! cjayant@cs.washington.edu

Accessible Follow-ups From CSUN 2010

Mark Willis — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:19:27 +0000

Many thanks to Jerry Hensley, my accessible tech guru, for sending these links to interviews from the 2010 CSUN conference [forwarded from the Flying Blind mailing list] :

1) You can hear 27 interviews from the recent CSUN conference from Serotek.
http://serotalk.com/2010/03/28/csun2010/

2) The second Serotek source for CSUN discussion was SeroTalk Podcast 38 where they play their favorite interviews.
http://serotalk.com/2010/03/29/serotalk-podcast-38-csun-2010-highlights/

3) Serotek’s final use of this programming will come on GMT Friday, 2 April at 01:00, when they will have a panel discussion about the most exciting discoveries from CSUN. Perhaps more interesting, they will discuss Windows XP mode, a free Microsoft feature allowing users of many versions of Windows 7 to run Windows XP on their systems.
http://serotalk.com/2010/03/31/tech-chat-56-csun-highlights-and-xp-mode-under-windows-7/

4) One of the CSUN interviews, and a forthcoming reading option for the blind, is Blio, the accessible commercial bookstore that is said to allow people to buy any of hundreds of thousands of commercially-available electronic books. Blio will be the subject of Tek Talk on GMT Tuesday,6 April at 00:00.
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

5) Another CSUN interview subject was the two new products released by IRTI, an entertainment center software with talking remote control, and a new student-teacher editin of their Eclipse-Writer program. .
http://www.irti.net/clearance/index.html

6) J.J. of BlindBargains conducted his own set of CSUN interviews, and many of the guests are different than those you’ll hear in the Serotek set:
http://www.blindbargains.com/audio/

7) Do you ever wish you could translate a big number into a meaningful real life example for your listeners? Well, Steve Duncan apparently had a bit too much free time, so he gives us the site NumberQuotes – Get a quote, make a point, where you can input a number and get a lot of examples of what that number would mean.
http://numberquotes.com/?s=200

Gizmo directs us to a potentially valuable tool: a free bootable CD (or USB stick) with the AVG anti-virus scanner and a number of repair tools built in. It’s Linux based
so it will run without Windows and could get your system going in case of virus or software failure.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmosbest/~3/yncaMbRm96c/avg-rescue-cd-90.htm

9) This Fred’s Head post tells you how to uninstall Windows Live Messenger.
http://www.fredshead.info/2010/03/windows-live-messenger-including.html

10) Some programs add options to the right-click menus of Windows Explorer, and perhaps you’ll never use some of those options. Fred’s Head directs us to Menumaid, a free program for cleaning up those menus.
http://www.sdsoftware.org/default.asp?id=11403

11) Salman Khan is creating a free site with over a thousand free science, math and finance viewos on many levels. You can read some articles about his endeavor and see the list of videos here:
http://www.khanacademy.org/

12) Jamal Mazrui is experimenting with the notion of screen OCR, where you can have a program take a picture of the screen of most any window and recognize the text contained there. The result is GrabText, which might work but which needs some money if it is to be viable.
http://EmpowermentZone.com/gtsetup.exe

13) Some people have determined to ask Freedom Scientific to implement a lease-to-own scheme so that individuals can buy JAWS without having to pay so much money up front, as they can do when buying Window-Eyes. Whether Freedom Scientific morally need or need not act on this petition, nothing requires them to, and nothing suggests that they will, but here it is in case you want to sign it:
http://www.petitiononline.com/FSl2o

Proposed US Law Would Force Product Accessibility

Mark Willis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:29:36 +0000

via E-Access Bulletin Live » Blog Archive » Proposed US Law Would Force Product Accessibility:

Manufacturers and suppliers of consumer technology devices in the US could be forced to make all their products accessible to blind consumers, if proposed legislation is passed by Congress.

Introduced by Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic House of Representatives member from Illinois, the Technology Bill of Rights for the Blind Act 2010 ( http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4533/text ) is based around creating accessible alternatives to what it calls “increasingly complex user interfaces” found in consumer electronics.

Many of these devices, from televisions and dishwashers to office equipment such as photocopiers and fax machines, are operated by touch-screen technology or other visual displays that are not accessible to blind people, the bill says. “This growing threat to the independence and productivity of blind people is unnecessary because electronic devices can easily be constructed with user interfaces that are not exclusively visual”, it says.

The draft law builds on guidelines set out in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires US Government bodies to engage in accessible IT and electronics procurement ( See: http://www.section508.gov ). Read more.

Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense: Translating the Gesture of Writing into Symbolic Communication

Mark Willis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:29:17 +0000

I continue to write notes on paper with a black felt tip pen, though I’ll probably never read them. I long ago lost the ability to read my own handwriting. I continue to write this way largely out of habit. I like to think that the gesture of writing helps me remember something of what is written. After watching this demonstration of SixthSense, especially the scene in which Post-It notes are transcribed into words on the computer, I think what I do could be more than futile gestures.

I’ve been imagining a functional computer display, including the keyboard, as large as a wall where I could stand and work. I’d rebuild my workspace for a wall like that..

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.

troubleBUBble77!

Re-Imagining Accessibility Via Digital Companions

Mark Willis — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:20:50 +0000

Yorick Wilks is a researcher with the Companions Project. He envisions a future with “digital companions” (don’t call them robots) who have long and memorable conversations with us — knowing our wants and foibles, getting things done, telling us jokes, maybe even laughing at the jokes we tell over and over again.

According to the Companions Project:

This will be an agent or ‘presence’ that stays with the user for long periods of time, developing a relationship and ‘knowing’ its owners preferences and wishes. It will communicate with the user primarily by using and understanding speech.

Yorick Wilks talked about the concept of digital companions on Radio Berkman, and a longer version of his Berkman lecture is available as a video.

I’ve written elsewhere about what I desire in a virtual assistant. I want one that can find and read anything to me, breaking down every barrier to accessibility. It would know as much as I do, if not more, about hacking text and code. It would know when to take out those noxious flashing scripts before I ever arrive at a web page. It would remember the floes and eddies of my attention. And unlike that stupid Microsoft wizard, it wouldn’t make me waste time trying to undo its unwanted prescience. Is that too much to ask? It’s certainly part of what I mean by re-imagining accessibility.

Speeding Up Alternative Textbooks for Visually Impaired Students

Mark Willis — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:01:37 +0000

via Marc Beja, Chronicle of Higher Education:

While music-recording companies have been fighting people who illegally share songs, book publishers are looking to expand file-sharing for college students with print-related disabilities.

AccessText, a new service that rolled out a beta version this week, has created an online database that makes it simpler for disability-student services at colleges to track down alternative forms of course materials from book publishers. When electronic versions don’t exist for a particular book, the college would get permission to scan the pages so a student could either make the font larger, or use other text-to-speech or refreshable Braille reading devices.

Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the Association of American Publishers, says the new service will maximize resources and get students materials faster.

“The publishers have got billions of dollars worth of content. The DSS offices are trying to get that out as quickly as possible, generally with very, very tight budgets and small staffs, and the students obviously need to get it in as timely a fashion as possible, so they’re not behind,” he says.

While the program is in its beta stage until next year, 367 offices are testing it free of charge, and eight publishers that are part of the association are footing the bill. When AccessText goes live in July 2010, members will pay between $375 and $500, on a sliding scale based on the institution’s size. At that point, Mr. Hildebrand hopes that colleges will be able to share materials with other approved institutions, with permission, instead of several schools duplicating efforts by scanning books that another member may already have.

Dawn V. Adams, digital-media-accessibility specialist at the Alternative Media Access Center at the University of Georgia, has been the first person to try out AccessText. With the new program, she says she is able to get books easier than she has in the past, and the turnaround for receiving an answer from a book publisher is as fast as before, if not faster.

“It’s streamlining the work that I do,” says Ms. Adams, who serves more than 877 students throughout the University System of Georgia. “All I have to do is go to one Web site for five different publishers and click a few buttons. It’s a really big timesaver.”

Will The iTouch Tablet Be Accessible?

Mark Willis — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:54:11 +0000

Jason Schwartz at Seeking Alpha predicts that the iTouch Tablet will “change society as we know it.” Expect the Apocalypse sometime in September. Schwartz reviews the evidence for what the new device might be (imagine an iPod Touch on steroids with a 10” screen) and gives four reasons for wild expectation. Here is reason #2:

Mobile High Speed Connectivity. Until now, a truly portable Internet device hasn’t been possible because of the scarce network availability. Verizon’s new Mi-Fi technology appears to be changing the landscape as it enables a Wi-Fi connection anytime and anywhere. It’s looking like this iTouch will mark the beginning of a relationship between Verizon and Apple. The anytime and anywhere connection will allow this product to serve as an up to the moment e-reader. By next year, we will all be wondering how the newspaper industry survived as long as it did with its outdated paper delivery model. The iTouch will replace newspapers, magazines, and books. Imagine a college student not having to lug around his $600 worth of textbooks each semester. Imagine not having to load up on magazines at the airport. The digitization of education and media has arrived. This is the first device that caters to digital readers on the go. Amazon’s (AMZN) black and white Kindle was such a poor attempt that it’s not even worth analyzing. Same goes for the netbook fad.

Sounds great, if it sounds great. What about accessibility?